Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

The comic features a conversation about hunting, specifically the concept of hunting humans ("The Most Dangerous Game"). One character says he wants to hunt the deadliest prey. Another points out that this is not really sporting, since on average a man is just sitting on a couch. The argument continues: hunting man is like hunting a giant lump with no legs. Someone counters by noting that some humans are dangerous -- they have weapons and skills. But the rebuttal is that those are the exceptions, and most people would be trivially easy to hunt.

The conversation then takes a darker turn. Someone brings up that people already do think about killing other people in mundane contexts -- road rage, reckless driving -- and the final observation is that "texting while driving is pretty popular," implying that humans are already inadvertently hunting each other with cars and phones. The joke reframes "The Most Dangerous Game" premise by pointing out that the average modern human is neither dangerous nor difficult prey, and that we are already casually endangering each other's lives without even trying.

The Humor

The comedy works by deflating the romantic notion of "man as the ultimate prey." The classic literary premise assumes humans are cunning, resourceful survivors, but the comic points out that most people are sedentary, distracted, and utterly unprepared for any kind of physical challenge. The escalation to texting-while-driving as a form of unintentional human hunting is the darkest and funniest beat, suggesting that we do not need a formal hunt when modern life already produces casual lethality at scale.

References

The title and premise reference Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game," in which a hunter is stranded on an island where a madman hunts humans for sport. It has become a widely referenced cultural trope about the idea that humans are the ultimate quarry.